Whether you’re looking for an easy way to revolutionise your living spaces, or you have a piece of furniture that looks like it might be starting to approach its limit, it’s always a lot more cost-effective, and often more satisfying, to consider the option of upgrading instead of replacing. Here, we’re going to look at a whole host of ways you can improve your furniture, even when it seems like it might be on the way out, from those that you can do in your own home, by yourself, to those that might require a little professional attention.
Prepare wooden furniture before working on it
If you’re looking to apply a new coat of paint or refinish your wooden furniture, you have to make sure that it’s clean and ready, first. This might mean stripping old painting finishes by brushing on a paint stripper, then gently using a scraper to lift up any of the paint that has bubbled up. For wooden furniture that is stained, you want to strip it using sandpaper instead. You don’t need to go too deep, just enough to remove the stain and be able to hoover up the wood dust. Of course, you can also use this to sand away any minor imperfections on the surface.
A new colour coat can do a lot of good
It is the simplest change that you can make to your furniture, but it’s also one of the best if you’re trying to make surface issues and flaws disappear while updating the look of your furniture for a more modern style. There are a lot of different ways you can repaint your furniture, whether you want to opt for a more on-trend colour, to make it better suit an existing colour palette, or even to add a hint of surprise. Some, for instance, will paint the interior of drawers and cupboards a different colour to create a little independent colour scheme for that piece alone.
Refinishing your furniture
Paint isn’t the only way you can upgrade the appearance of faded, old furniture. If you like the look of natural wood grain, then you can enhance it on your own by refinishing or restaining it. As mentioned above, you want to strip any existing finish or stain before time. Before you apply the stain or finish itself, you should apply a wood conditioner to make sure that the stain is going to adhere to the wood properly. After that, you should apply a coat or even two coats of a protective finish. A good stain not only helps your furniture look a lot better. When it’s applied properly, it also helps it last a lot longer by protecting it from moisture and rot.
Add some life to its look with transfers or decals
If the piece of furniture is functionally doing fine but is just looking a little basic or bare for the aesthetic of your space, then there are a few ways to breathe new life into it. With stencils, you can easily paint or apply all sorts of little details and designs onto the surface of a piece of furniture. Decals are applied directly to furniture with a varnished paper base, which is soaked and then fitted onto the furniture. Just make sure you peel back off the base to leave the decal behind. Furniture transfers are easy to apply, you just have to roll it onto the furniture.
Breathe new life into upholstered pieces
You might be comfortable working with wood, but if you see upholstered furniture, then you may well think that’s too much work to get into. However, reupholstering doesn’t have to be too difficult. For one, there may be upholstering services near you that can take care of it for you. If not, it’s a matter of learning how to remove upholstered fabric, replace it with new fabric of your own, and fit it with new back and seat cushions. After all, often, the failure of upholstered materials also comes with the diminished comfort and thickness of the cushioning beneath the fabric, as well. It’s not an easy DIY task, but it’s far from impossible to learn, as well.
Get some legs on it
In some cases, it might be that the majority of the piece is doing fine, but there is a component or two that is starting to let it down and make it not as much of a fit for the home. This can apply to, for instance, your tables and chairs. If you take a perfectly good table top that’s starting to feel wobbly underneath and install some steel table legs to replace its original, you might be able to keep it for a lot longer. A lot of such furniture is made with only a few pieces of wood or metal, but if the legs are made from something else than the rest of it, then you might be able to replace them.
Give it some wheels
Sometimes, you want to replace parts of your furniture not because they have seen better days, but because they could see much better ones in future with just a little added functionality. To that end, you can easily turn things like a table into a bar cart by adding wheels to it. Typically, you want to use this trick on smaller pieces that are going to be a lot easier to maneuver, and you want to make sure that the pieces are sturdy enough to take all of that movement, on top of carrying things, without slowly falling apart. Table caster wheels are relatively easy to add onto the bottom of any furniture that has room for them, and plenty resilient enough on their own.
You can refresh your steel furniture, as well
If you have steel furniture that’s no longer its reliable and sturdy self, rust is often a likely culprit. Rust can be tricky, as depending on how deeply it is set in and how much it has spread, your piece might be beyond saving. However, with some pieces, you may still have time to powder coat it. This method is not one that is usually available as it requires some specific tools, but if you can find a professional who offers metal furniture refurbishing services, they might be able to remove chipped paint as well as rust and give your furniture a new finish with a powder coating of your preferred colour.
Switching out your doors
If you have a cabinet that is starting to look a little less than enthusiastic, then many of the tips above will help you better improve the look of the material that its made of, but the function of the furniture is just as important, and this usually comes down to the condition of the doors. Replace your cabinet doors with new fittings can help you immediately make it a lot more practical, especially if the old door has rusty hinges or other signs of damage. Of course, one trend that’s on the rise right now is the spread of open-air cabinets; that is, cabinets with no doors. If you have some old window shutters, you might even be able to spruce them up to use as a replacement.
Reshaping your pieces with some moulding
Don’t worry, this isn’t the kind of mould you have to worry about finding in your home. If you have a piece that is serving you well but is looking a little basic when it comes to the details, then you might be able to add a little extra flourish, yourself. You can add moulding and trim to your furniture, basically giving it a little extra shaping and details that can turn a more basic piece into something a little more sophisticated looking. A lot of people use moulding and trim to give their furniture a sense of place in time, to make it better fit certain design trends and architectural periods, whether to create a statement piece or just to better fit their surroundings.
Know when a piece isn’t worth saving
All of the tips above can help you breathe new life into your furniture, whether it’s by covering or fixing the imperfections that appear over the years, or by replacing parts that aren’t working as well anymore. However, it is likely to come a time that a piece of furniture is going to start costing more to repair than it will to replace, or that any repairs you do make are only going to need to be redone months down the line. While it’s worth fighting to keep your furniture a little longer, you don’t want to be spending all that time and effort if it’s barely going to pay off. You need to know the limit of a piece of furniture.
The methods mentioned here are only examples of the many various ways that you can improve, enhance, upcycle, and extend the lifespan of your furniture. Keep a beloved piece in the family for much longer by giving it some of the care it deserves.
The Coastal Mummy 
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